Reversible Errors (43 page)

"No 'Faro Cole,' " Muriel announced.

The sound of his cell spit on the line. "Check under F?" Larry asked finally.

She hadn't. 'Faro' was written in pen, in Luisa's precise hand, which looked as if it had been inscribed against a ruler. 'Cole' had been added in pencil some time later.

"Fuck," Larry said.

"Time-out," Muriel said. She rewound and tried to go through it on her own. "Erno shot Luisa's fence six years later? Is that a coincidence? Or do we know there's a connection between Erdai and him?"

"When Erno was arrested at Ike's," Larry said, "right after the shooting, Erno claimed Cole went off because Erdai had investigated him way back when for some kind of ticket fraud. Had to be referring to the scam Faro had run with Luisa and Squirrel, right?"

Larry had been thinking about this all day and was way ahead of her. She asked how he got that.

"Because we figured out last week that Erdai must have pieced together what the three of them were up to. That's why he had Luis
a s
earched. And Genevieve said she had mentioned Faro's name to Erno. He must have found him."

"And why is Faro pissed enough at Erdai six years later to come after him with a gun?"

"I don't know, not exactly, but in the five-sheets on the shooting, the coppers all said that Faro was screaming about how Erdai owed him for messing up his life. He must have put Faro out of business somehow. That would be like Erno, right? Whether Luisa was dead or not, he was still the sheriff in that town. It's the same as I figured the other day. Erdai wanted the bad guys to get theirs. He just couldn't let on that he could have saved Luisa's life."

"So is this good news or bad news?"

"Christ," said Larry, "it's gotta be good. It's gotta be great. Remember how Erno jumped out of the witness chair when you asked him about the shooting? Didn't want to go near it. Five gets you ten, that's because he knew Faro could tell you what a load of crap Erdai was peddling on the stand. I say this boy Faro is going to give you the movie version of the coming attractions we heard from Genevieve last week. It'll be Squirrel the Asshole Murderer in Technicolor."

She thought it over, but Larry was making sense.

"The only hitch," he said, "is I spent a good week pissing for shit and giggles looking for this Faro. Near as I can tell, he flew up his own behind." From what he'd found, Larry said, Faro Cole seemed to have appeared on the local scene in 1990, when he'd applied for a driver's license. He had an address and a phone, but was gone a year later, then returned in 1996 at another apartment. Once he was released from the hospital in 1997, following the shooting, he skipped again.

Larry had made dozens of calls and had canvassed both prior addresses with Dan Lipranzer, but had added little to what they already knew, except that Faro was six three, 220 pounds, and born in 1965. Any paperwork, like credit reports or employment history which the phone company or his landlords had gathered, was destroyed long ago, and the state archived only the written data from his driver's license. Faro Cole had no arrest record here-or elsewhere, according to the FBI. That was unusual for a fence, but Larry checked severa
l p
recincts, and no one knew Faro's name. In desperation, Larry had even called a little birdie he had at Social Security who whispered in his ear now and then about whether payroll taxes had been paid on a number anywhere in the country. These days, Faro Cole appeared to be jobless or dead or using another name.

"A guy who came into a bar waving a gun around," Larry said, "I'd have figured they'd put some charges on him, but I guess with Faro bleeding out on Ike's floor, nobody was thinking much about that. Undertaker looked like a better bet than the paramedics. Anyway, there's no mug shot or prints. The only thing I find from the case is Faro's gun and the shirt they stripped off him in surgery-still inventoried in evidence, actually. I thought if I send the pistol over to Mo Dicker- man, it's possible he can pick up a print on it. Maybe with that, we find Faro under another name."

Dickerman was the Chief Fingerprint Examiner and as good as anyone in the country. Muriel liked that idea.

"And if you want to pop for it out of the P
. A
.'s budget," Larry said, "we can do DNA on the blood on the shirt, too. See if he's in CODIS." CODIS stood for Combined DNA Index System, but that was a $5,000 longshot. Larry, however, wanted to pull out all the stops, and she didn't fight him.

"Happy?" she asked, as she had last week. Once again Larry hesitated.

"I'm still missing something," he said.

"Maybe you miss me, Larry." She found that line hilarious, but she didn't linger on the phone to see if he, too, was laughing.

Chapter
29

july 2001

Togethe
r t
hey were together whenever they were not at work. For Gillian, who had defied the inclination to cling even in junior high, the experience was otherworldly. Arthur stayed in the office until she was done at the store, then picked her up for dinner at eight or nine. Usually she'd shopped at the gourmet counter at Morton's and was waiting with a heavy shopping bag when Arthur's round sedan cruised to the curb. At his apartment, they made love and ate and made love again. Most nights she slept there and returned to her place at Duffy's for a few hours once Arthur left for work.

Consuming physical passion had never really been part of any of her prior relationships. Now Arthur and the stimulation of sex remained at the periphery of her mind throughout the day. Often some stray association she could not even name sent a pleasing throb through her breasts and pelvis. Arthur and she seemed stuck in the sweet valley of sensation. The strong stalk that grew from Arthur was
like some secret self. Real life commenced here. This was the moist cellar of being, the dark mysterious foundation rooms. If she-or Arthur-had previously made the descent they might have an idea how to rise up from time to time, but now they seemed melted together at the core of pleasure.

"I'm an addict," she said one night, and was immediately struck dumb by her carefree remark. There were a thousand thoughts she was unwilling to explore.

Their languor was reinforced by Gillian's reluctance to carry their affair beyond Arthur's bedroom. It seemed impossible to her that their relationship could survive once they began to mix with others, once they inserted themselves in the context of history and expectations and endured judgment and gossip. Like some enchantment, what existed between them would perish in the light of day.

Arthur, on the other hand, would have been just as happy to take out front-page advertisements announcing his dedication to her, and he was frequently frustrated by her unwillingness to venture out together, even to visit the homes of his high-school and college friends who he insisted would be discreet and accepting. Instead, the only consistent company they kept was with Arthurs sister, Susan. Every Tuesday, they drove to the Franz Center for Susan's injection and the subsequent trip to the apartment. On the way back, Arthur narrated the events of his day, pretending Susan was keeping track. At the lights, she would glance to the backseat, almost as if she were checking that Gillian was still there.

In the apartment, the agenda was always identical to their first evening together. Gillian remained largely an outsider as Arthur and Susan cooked, then Susan retreated with her plate to the television set. She spoke to Gillian infrequently. But when she did, the salvaged Susan, the coherent personality which collected inside her, the asteroid in a belt of space dust and gravel, was in charge. She never confronted Gillian with her madness.

One night Arthur had to reset a circuit breaker in the basement. Seeking another cigarette, Susan approached Gillian on her kitchen stool. She now trusted Gillian to trigger the lighter for her, and sh
e t
ook in the first breath as if she hoped to reduce the entire cigarette to ash with a single drag.

"I don't understand you," Susan said. Shielded by the bluish veil she'd released between them, Susan darted her pretty green eyes toward Gillian.

"You don't?"

"I keep changing my mind. Are you a Compliant or a Normal?"

Gillian was taken aback, not by what Susan was suggesting, but because on her own, Susan had adopted the same coinage Gillian had applied at Alderson to the travelers on the trains that clattered past the prison boundary. They were Normals to Gillian not due to any inherent superiority, but because they were free of the stigma of confinement. That, undoubtedly, was how Susan regarded the so-called sane.

"I'm trying to be a Normal," Gillian said. "Sometimes it feels as if I am. Especially when I'm with Arthur. But I'm still not sure."

There was no more to the conversation, but a few nights later, Arthur called out to Gillian in excitement. She found him in the apartment's second bedroom, where the only light was the cool glow from his office laptop, which he lugged home every evening.

"Susan sent you an e-mail!"

Gillian approached the screen with caution. As she read, she sank slowly to Arthur's knee.

Arthur give this to Gillian. DON'T READ IT.

It's not for you.

.

Hi, Gillian.

Please do not get too excited about this. I have been working on this e-mail for three days now and Valerie has given me some help. Usually, I cannot put down more than a sentence or two. There are only so many moments in the day when I'm able to hold on to words long enough to write them, especiall
y w
hen they are about me. Either I can't remember the term for the feeling, or the feeling disappears when I recall the word. Most of the time, my mind is fragments. Normals don't seem to understand that, but for me the usual state in my head is images jumping up and disappearing like the flames over a burning log.

But I am having good days and I had some things I could never tell you face-to-face. Conversation is so hard for me. I cannot handle everything at once. Just the look in someone's eyes can be distracting. Let alone smiling or joking. Questions. A new saying is enough to send me off for several minutes, wherever it leads. It is better for me like this.

What did I mean to say?

I like you. I think you know that. You don't look down on me. You have been to some bad places--I can feel that. But the more I see you, the more I realize we are not the same, even though I wish we were. I'd really like to think I can make it back the way you have. I want you to know how hard I try. I think to Normals it appears as if I just want to succumb. But it takes a lot of strength to hold my own. I am afraid whenever I see a radio, or hear one. I go down the street all the time saying Don't listen, Don't listen. And the sight of people on the bus with headphones may be my undoing. I hear only the voices I don't want to whenever I see thos
e r
eversible error
s p
ads over somebody's ears. Even as I am typing these words, I can literally feel the electricity coming out of the keyboard, and there is no way to turn off the certainty that someone like the Great Oz is out there at the heart of the Net, waiting to take me over. All my strength goes into resisting. I'm like those people in movies I remember from childhood, where there is a shipwreck and huge waves, and the survivors are paddling desperately in the water holding on to a life ring or a piece of floating junk, so they don't go down.

I can see you are trying every day, too. Keep trying. Keep trying. It would be harder for me if I ever saw someone like you give up. You make Arthur happy. It is easier for me when he is happy. I don't have to'feel I've ruined his life. Please do your best to keep him happy. Not just for me. For him. He deserves to be happy. It would be horrible if you weren't with him. It is better with three.

Your friend, Susan

.

Gillian was devastated. It was like receiving a letter from someone held for ransom, someone you knew would never be freed. When she allowed Arthur to read the screen, he, predictably, wept. The messages he got were seldom more than ten or twenty words, produced in the isolated moments of coherence that fell upon Susan briefly every day, like a magic spell. But he was not envious so much as moved by his sisters concern for him-and also, to Gillian's eye, suddenly frightened.

"What is she worried about?" Arthur asked. Gillian refused to answer. But she felt a pall encroaching. Even someone as perpetually hopeful as Arthur had to consider a peril that was obvious to a madwoman.

That night, when they made love there was an absence-still tender but more anchored here on earth. Afterwards, as Gillian reached to the bedside table for a cigarette, Arthur asked the question neither of them had ever ventured aloud.

"What do you think will happen with us?"

At the inception, she'd made her predictions, and much as she would have it otherwise, her view had not changed.

"I think in time, you'll move on, Arthur. Perhaps build on what you've learned about yourself with me and find someone your own age. Marty. Have babies. Have your life." She was startled to find how fully she'd envisioned the outcome. Arthur, naturally, was taken aback and pulled himself up on an elbow to glower.

"Don't pretend you don't understand, Arthur. This would have been far better for you at another stage."